Day 19, September 19 At 5 am we got ready, rode the "lift" to the front desk, checked out, and sat in the now quiet courtyard. Two German ladies with luggage showed up followed by two more couples. We had booked the 6 am shuttle and could not afford to take the one an hour later. As we sat there two ladies of the evening staggered toward the van laughing and talking loudly until one bent over the bushes and puked. She wiped her mouth and staggered on obviously still under the influence of a foreign substance, probably alcohol. Hoping they [View Full Entry]

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Day 18, September 18 At 3:40 we checked out, grabbed some free Scandic Marski pens, and waited for our 25 euro/$35 relatively cheap cab. Arriving a few minutes late while the high priced cabs sat out front, I double checked the price with the recent eastern immigrant, and we left listening to twangy irritating Indian music. I sat in the first row while Lee sat behind in the next. With absolutely no traffic we wound around some back streets and stopped in front of an apartment building. Someone else had also booked the cab. The driver exited and looked in the [View Full Entry]

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Day 17, September 17 We woke up to clear skies and cool weather. At breakfast I tried smoked herring which tasted pretty good, not good enough for a second helping, but not too bad. We loaded up on meat, bread, jam, eggs, tomato, yogurt, fruit, cereal, and orange juice. No later fish burps made me regret my herring helping. We hopped on the #3 tram and arrived 25 minutes ahead of the scheduled departure of the Sea Fort ferry as checked the day before. However, the board said 5 minutes to departure, pays to be early. Past a few islands, some [View Full Entry]

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Day 11, September 11 Besides being my Mother's 91st birthday, we all remember the insane, Muslim, diseased, creeps who flew into the World Trade Center in 2001. Imagine their surprise when, instead of beautiful virgins, they were greeted by the red stoker in hell, not much different than their countries. We walked to the train station and got two tickets on the slow train for 204 NOK/$34. On the platform a group of middle school students gave me the heebie jeebies with the usual cacophony and bullies shoving shorter intellectual students wearing black horn rimmed glasses off the platfor [View Full Entry]

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Day 12, Saturday, September 12 We have had many included breakfasts at hotels around the world, usually hockey puck rolls, cereal, and juice, tea, or coffee. The Royal Viking had the BEST breakfast we have ever had. With more choices than a big balled black bull in a herd of horny Hereford heifers they even had a Japanese buffet besides the 100 foot regular buffet. We treated this as breakfast, mid morning snack, brunch, lunch, and late afternoon snack piling on meat, potatoes, pancakes, eggs, fruit, yogurt, cheese, Danish, rolls, vegetables, and juice into a 3.86 pound pile of Swedish [View Full Entry]

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Day 13, September 13 Another 3.86 pound breakfast of meat, eggs, pancakes, yogurt, fruit, and juice packed a gazillion calories into the hatch for a long haul sightseeing day. On a Sunday the busses run infrequently. Waiting at first one bus stop, another and another, we just kept walking until we hit the Royal Palace which had not opened yet. Right behind the Palace is Riddarholmskyrkan/Riddarholmen Church with a number of Swedish Monarchs and nobility buried there. As you walk in a big sign has a camera with a flash and a red circle with a line through it. If that [View Full Entry]

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We don't trust any one or anything especially on trips where evil locals give false or misleading information to helpless tourists. After another huge delicious breakfast, I departed exactly at 8 am to check how long the airport trip took. The directions from the information booth yesterday seemed extremely simple. Use the Stockholm Card, take public transportation to Marsta and bus 583 to the airport. On my public transportation map it appeared I took the metro. At the metro station the attendant said, "No, you take the train." I walked a quarter mile to the train station, looked a [View Full Entry]

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Day 15, September 15 After eating another colon clogging colossal breakfast and thanks to scouting yesterday we left at 8 am confident in reaching Arlanda Airport way ahead of time before our Stockholm Card expired. At the airport self check in we got our boarding passes for the changed flight at almost 2 pm. At the gate we saw stairs going up to the second floor where we parked all by ourselves with a great view of the take off runway and the forest beyond. A huge cloud of black smoke shot up from the forest, and we assumed the terrorist [View Full Entry]

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Day 16, September 16 We woke up to rain. The breakfast buffet tasted good, but took second place to the Radisson in Stockholm. Umbrella in hand we marched out to the tram stop in front of the hotel and rode the circuit past residential areas, parks, the Olympic Stadium, down town buildings, and back to the train station where we departed to collect some information. The tourist information agent pointed out areas of interest on the map and when I asked about the very early plane departure indicated we had but one option, TAXI. I have never had a good taxi [View Full Entry]

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Day 7, September 7 We beat the sun up, walked to the central train station, stood in line to buy a 42 DKK/$8 supplemental ticket, and got on the train to the airport. At the x-ray security two guys got in a verbal screaming match when one attempted to butt in the line. As we sat in the parked Norwegian Air plane they announced, "As we are presently refueling the plane, please remain in your seat with the seatbelt unfastened." I suppose, when the cigarette from the pump jockey ignited the huge fireball, we could all run screaming with clothes and [View Full Entry]

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